Episode 18: Legal Marketing Tips for Competitive Metro Areas

In this episode of Championing Justice, personal injury attorney Darl Champion discusses strategies to succeed in legal marketing in highly competitive metro areas with Florida personal injury attorney Matthew Dolman.

→ Learn more about Matt and his law firm here: https://www.dolmanlaw.com

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Transcript

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Championing Justice Podcast.

My name is Darl Champion.

I am a personal injury attorney in Georgia.

Our office is in Marietta, Georgia, just right outside of Atlanta.

And on this month's episode, we have my good friend, Matt Dolman, who's joining us from Clearwater, Florida.

And I've known Matt for a number of years, and people ask me, how did we meet?

And I think what happened was I somehow got on your email list.

And I really liked the way that you marketed your firm and the way that you presented everything.

And I was like, this is what I kind of envision our marketing is being.

So I got in touch with Matt.

I've got some family on my wife's side down in the Clearwater area.

So I thought he'd be a great guy to know and have gotten to know him.

And he's been a good friend for a number of years.

Thanks for joining us, Matt.

I appreciate it.

So Matt is a very good lawyer, but he's also very good at marketing.

And so that's one of the reasons I wanted to have him on this podcast was because a lot of lawyers that I talked to that listened to the podcast and asked me for advice.

They want advice from other lawyers because every time they talk to an agency, they don't really know if like what they're telling them is legit.

So they always go to a lawyer and say, has this worked?

And Matt's tried a number of different things.

He's somebody that I think has probably have the most expertise of any lawyer that I know on the personal injury side.

So that's going to be a big part of what we talk about.

But before we dive into the details, tell us a little bit about your firm and how it's currently structured and how many attorneys you have, types of cases you handle.

Definitely.

Personal Injury Trial Firm out of Clearwater, Florida.

That's our main hub, but we're located with offices throughout the state.

So we're in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach, Orlando, and Tampa as well.

But we've kind of segued into mass torts over the last three to four years.

And we're on leadership in the Suboxone Dental Decay Lawsuit, as well as the Heavy Metal and Baby Foods Lawsuit.

Are you still doing single event cases through your firm?

We still are and we still try cases actively.

Interesting.

Did the changing laws in Florida have anything to do with your shift towards mass torts?

Not to my shift in mass torts, but to my shift in referring at marketing in other states and referring cases out in Georgia, Texas and New York.

Florida's gone just belly up.

It's terrible.

The offers we're getting, pre-suit, they're just so low.

Really?

Normally, back two years ago, we would settle 70% of our cases in pre-suit, 30% in litigation.

Now it's the reverse.

Interesting.

So it's delayed cash realization.

Yeah.

Well, a lot of what we're going to talk about is single event marketing as well, because that's something that you're still doing in other states.

Of course.

And of course, even in Florida, you're still doing it.

100%.

And referring some of those cases out.

So how many attorneys do you all have?

Seven.

And one of the things that I've always been impressed by is your just in-house marketing capabilities.

What do you all do in-house, and what does your in-house marketing team look like?

I have trouble keeping track of it.

I've got five full-time writers that all they do is pump out content.

And when I say pump out content, we're doing a lot of new blogs, but it's also looking at our content that ranks, in terms of search engine optimization, seeing what ranks in the top 10 and refreshing that.

Google likes fluid content, not static.

So the more times you're updating it, the more times they're crawling your page, the more of a benefit you'll get.

So these content writers, are these people that are coming up with their own content ideas, or you're giving them ideas?

I produce a content calendar every month, but then every once in a while, something comes up.

Like the Georgia plant explosion, for instance.

There's going to be something newsworthy, or some new mass tort, or something that happened that is worth blogging about at that very moment.

So we kind of have to adjust in the fly.

Interesting.

Anybody else besides writers that you have on your marketing team?

I mean, I wear multiple hats, so I think I'm also like the marketing director, per se.

No, that's us.

It's just, that's in-house.

And of course, you have outsourced marketing as well.

A lot.

Right?

And so, one of the things I think that's important is, your in-house marketing writers, your content writers, are not taking the place of an outside SEO agency.

They're complementing those efforts.

Is that accurate?

I mean, we do a little bit of work on the site architecture, but what would take me a half hour to an hour to code, somebody who's a professional can do in a minute to a minute and a half.

So, my best time is probably utilize working actually on the content or running the firm, as opposed to working on coding.

And you're in Morgan & Morgan's backyard.

Correct.

So, they're in my backyard.

I like the way you put that.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about, you know, competing in, and you consider that South Florida, by the way.

I've always considered Tampa like Middle Florida, Central Florida.

Central Florida.

I mean, Central Florida is really considered Orlando, because that's like the epicenter.

It's a center.

Yeah.

But you know what?

University of South Florida is in Tampa, which I never understand.

Which makes no sense.

Makes no sense.

But you're in a very competitive landscape.

I mean, even apart from Morgan & Morgan, you've got a ton of personal injury lawyers competing for business.

How do you try to set yourself apart?

So I could take you back from the early beginning of how I set myself apart.

We can go back, you know, as long as you want.

This is an interesting story.

You don't even know this one.

So when I first started out, it's on the cusp of being unethical, but it's not unethical.

We actually got a bar opinion about this.

I would wait for lawyers to drop.

When they died, I would buy their phone numbers.

We would look at the obituary every single day.

You're not going to get anyone on your podcast that's going to give you a story like this.

We would buy the phone numbers, and they would just answer law office.

They would call about elder planning needs, divorce, whatever have you, and I referred those cases out to other lawyers in town in turn, because we were sending them so much work, they start sending me all their personal injury cases.

Interesting.

We were new.

We weren't good.

But that's how we learned.

We got a lot of cases that way.

I've always run the opposite direction of the sheep.

So, you know, fast forward a few years later, no one was doing SEO yet.

Very few people.

Everyone was purchasing ads in the phonebook.

The insert, the inside cover, the cover.

Those were like $25,000 to $50,000 a month.

We didn't have that.

So we jumped in to SEO.

And it's like language immersion.

I eventually learned as much as I could possibly learn about it.

Read every blog, started attending every single conference I could go.

And eventually I started speaking at those very conferences and learning it has become a language of mine.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's great.

In terms of digital marketing, would you say that's the focus of your marketing efforts?

Yeah.

I mean, to give the best answer, yes.

But there's several other areas that complement digital marketing, but digital marketing is always there as the mainstay.

What would you say those other areas are?

We've done everything you could possibly think of.

We've done over the top.

So OTT, which is streaming.

We've done radio.

I've stayed off television for the most part, other than streaming.

I think you run your ad budget very thin.

Unless you have the money to compete with the big boys, I would stay out of that area.

We've done a lot of paper click, which is part digital, but it's its own animal.

So it's not really SEO, because once you turn that faucet off, it's off for good.

Unlike SEO, which just stays around.

I've seen a billboard in Clearwater that said size does not matter.

Yeah, we had that to make fun of Morgan, because Morgan has size matters.

By the way, they're a fine firm.

I'm looking to create a fight with Morgan.

I'm all for a fight with them.

I've done that many, many times.

No, they actually send me some cases here and there.

We send them some work every once in a while.

But yes, they're the 800-pound proverbial gorilla in the corner.

I will say this about Morgan.

They do have some good lawyers.

I've never attacked a person that's worked there or their employees.

My criticism has always just been in the business model, and some of the things that just the way they're structured.

It's just a different.

Also, they advertise.

They attack other lawyers on a regular basis.

Yes.

That's amazing to me that they're now trying to get referrals from other lawyers, this new division that they're creating, but then they shit all over the small firm lawyers.

Well, they tell you that size matters and we have 800 lawyers, but those 800 lawyers aren't working on your case.

You might have one lawyer, two lawyers, and a couple of assistants working on your case.

By the way, you're going to be one of maybe 500 cases.

Yes.

Now, lawyers probably overburden, tax, and doesn't have enough time to look at your case.

But I don't want to make any generalizations.

If you're listening to John Morgan, I'm not attacking you.

I wish he would listen to my podcast.

I doubt he does.

He probably doesn't even know who I am.

But other marketing channels display advertising, Facebook look-alike audiences.

Are you used to the OTT over the top?

Is that what it's called?

That's like Hulu, things like that?

Yeah, streaming.

Are you still doing that?

A little bit.

Okay.

Have you found that to be something that's produced cases?

We have, but then we noticed as we spend more on it, we've kind of plateaued.

So we have found a sweet spot.

It's the law of diminishing returns.

So we spend about $30 to $50 a month on that.

Yes.

Okay.

I just want to make sure.

Not $30 for people.

No, no, no.

It's a little more expensive than that.

Yeah, no.

I mean, that's a lot of mess in the entire market.

People see us all over the Internet, and they see us there.

It's multiple touch points, and it helps the proverbial buyer.

They're not a buyer, though, but the perspective consumer.

One of the things that I have found so impressive about your marketing efforts is just your website presence and your digital presence from an SEO perspective.

How did you decide to go that route and focus so much on your website?

Like you said, when everybody's doing yellow pages and showing up in the phone book, you put a ton of resources into this and still are.

So again, we got in early, and because we saw success so early, because we were basically swimming against like two or three other people or other lawyers, it just it fostered us to just double down on our efforts, and it's been successful since.

In addition to the five full-time content writers on the website itself, do you have anybody doing your social media stuff?

We do.

We never had a true me rephrase.

It's been like a revolving door, if you will.

I've done some of it.

Not successfully.

The problem I have is, I know how to do social, but if you're not doing it every single day and staying on top of it, it's worthless.

So it's really about consistency and amplifying that message on a daily basis, and that's where I fail.

So, one question I get a lot from lawyers is whether it is worth it to invest in SEO.

And it's interesting, the question is never presented that way.

It's always like, should I do SEO?

And it's like, well, it's complicated.

You got in early.

For new lawyers starting out, is it something that they can still try to do and get a hold?

Yeah, so SEO is not what it used to be.

But it's like when I hear from lawyers that Florida law is not what it used to be.

You're just dull with the cards you have now.

If you're dealing with the deck we have now, you have less space, there's less real estate on Google's first page.

LSA is a push down, paper click, which is push down the map, which is push down organic.

So everything so far, above the fold and below the fold.

Above the fold is what you look at without touching your key, or touching the mouse.

Once you touch the mouse and scroll, you're below the fold.

Organic is so far below the fold.

But yes, I would get involved in SEO, and I would look at long tail search terms, answer the pain points that the consumer has, like, will my car accident case go to trial?

Who's paying my medical bills after a car accident?

Those search queries are not going to result in advertisements.

Those long tail search terms are what we get cases off of.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I see is everybody wants to ring number one for Atlanta Personal Injury Attorneys.

That's what I was getting at here.

That in terms are worthless.

Because there's so many door kickers, tire kickers.

Those people are just going to, they're window shoppers.

They're not going to select you.

They're going to look at, like, 40 different firms.

The other problem that I have with that approach is there's a bazillion other firms in Atlanta that want to be number one for Atlanta Personal Injury Attorney.

And guess what?

Like, a lot of them can pay way more money than, you know, the solo practitioner, the small 5 to 10 attorney firm can.

So it's really difficult to compete with that.

Now, we're in a suburb of Atlanta.

We're in Marietta, so, you know, we've found some success that way, I think, with our maps listing and some with Organic.

But it is still a challenge.

I mean, I've heard from people that have had great success from an SEO perspective, you know, 5, 10 years ago.

They're not seeing the same success now.

What's their strategy, though?

If your strategy is maps and your strategy is LSAs, it's a whole different story.

I think it's the traditional Organic, the people that traditionally did Organic.

OK.

They're having trouble now?

Yeah, well, they're just not seeing...

They're getting leads, but just not the same volume.

Are they focusing on vanity terms or long-tail search terms?

Probably the vanity terms.

Yeah, the vanity terms have become kind of worthless.

One of the problems that we have found is, you mentioned the tire kickers, is you're also, if you are number one, the person might be calling number one, two, three, four, five, and then they just want to negotiate down the price of whatever the fee is going to be.

We see that, yeah.

Do y'all talk to those clients and negotiate with them, or do you just tell them, this is our fee?

Sorry.

I mean, there's a sliding scale based on how great the case is, of course.

You know, monster case, you'll be willing to cut your fees a little bit.

But it's not a commodity.

And I know I don't like to negotiate fees.

Yeah.

I mean, that's kind of our approach, too.

If it's a regular soft issue car wreck case, you know, and even if it looks like it's going to be moderate damages, we're like, look, our fees, you know, we charge a third.

We're not going to deviate from that.

And that's for car wrecks.

If it's Med Mal and Premises, it's 40.

But we'll have people, there's a guy, I don't know if you've seen the billboards.

I know you just got in Atlanta last night, but I don't know if any of the other times you've been here, you've seen the My 25% Lawyer.

We have that in our area too.

Really?

Yeah.

It's a different guy, though.

It's not the same guy.

No, it's a different guy.

So we've seen the 15% guy.

We had a guy who didn't call himself the 15% guy, but he was charging 15%.

I think those guys were looked at as a joke.

Yeah.

They were almost like, why are you so cheap?

Yeah.

Well, I think there was somebody that came out after the 25% guy and said, I'm the 20% lawyer.

And his slogan was 20 is plenty.

So, yeah, I mean, I will say this.

I mean, I've noticed that the best cases we get come from referrals, like the big cases.

Is there an opportunity for lawyers to get good cases online through SEO?

Or should they be focusing on something else, like whether it's referral relationships, social media, branding and presence, maybe even PPC?

Yeah, I went to one, to the absence of the other, but I would focus on them all.

You got to have a multi-channel, multi-medium approach.

But yes, you can still find really good cases on SEO.

We can prove that.

Can you share with us the biggest case that you've...

104 million this year.

Nice.

Yeah, it wasn't mine.

So it was a product liability case.

Andrew Knopf in Duval County, Florida, hit a case out against Ford.

This is about four years old, though.

So it's not new Google case.

It's an older Google case that had been kicked around for a while.

T-Bone resulting in an explosion.

That's slightly more than our best case, by the way.

But I only got a referral fee on this one.

I didn't get the full fee.

But still, it's nice.

Yeah.

So have you been able to sign multiple seven-figure cases from your website?

Yes.

Over the years, not like anyone's been.

Is that something that you think is still an option for lawyers?

Yes.

If you're hitting the pain points, if you're trying for the dandy terms, no, you're not going to get anything.

You're going to just get garbage.

What do you think that is?

Do you think it's because of just searcher behavior?

Do you think it's the real estate pushing down the organic results even further?

Because those terms are going to, those search queries are going to result in ads.

So once you have the LSAs and paper click, and then the maps, the organic is so far below, where if you just focus on long-tail search queries, those three categories are not there.

Right.

Is that something that you recommend law firms do with an in-house marketing writer, or that they use their agency for?

Because it seems like a lot of agencies are not well suited for that.

They're not, you know, writing seems to be a weak point for a lot of agencies.

Yes, we have our own in-house writers.

The company that we use for SEO, I think does a phenomenal job.

They do a little bit of writing for us, but most of it's handled in-house.

I think you can do both.

Let's say that you're starting your own firm in Clearwater, Florida.

Sure.

And you're looking at kind of the landscape of, what do I do from a marketing perspective?

Are you recommending that that law firm make a substantial SEO investment if they want to get cases?

Are you recommending that they focus on writing themselves or maybe hiring writers?

If I was starting out from scratch, if I could afford to hire a few writers and keep a very small budget for someone to do the site architecture, obtaining some backlinks, which are like a vote of validity in the eyes of Google, I would do that because you're going to get better content from people in-house who understand what you're actually working on.

You can focus on writing a whole, like a bevy of different topics and hopefully strike gold on a couple of them.

How do they get, you know, get those pages to rank?

Have you, do you think that the substantial SEO investments in major metro areas still make sense?

When you say substantial investment, what are we thinking of?

$25,000, $30,000 a month and...

Tough to say.

If you don't have a brand and you don't have any other mediums and you had no other success, you're just starting out fresh, no.

If you have a brand that's well recognized in the area, yeah, you can be successful with a $25,000 a month spend in a major metro.

What are you seeing?

But it's also, again, your strategy, though.

If you're trying to concentrate on vanity terms and you're trying to rank against Malik and Jen Gore and all these other people who have huge brands in the area, you're not going to do well.

But if you're focusing on those long tails and putting out really good content, they're not doing that.

Right.

A lot of people ask me this question.

And I know the answer is going to be, it depends.

But they say, how much should I spend?

I'm not going to say it depends.

That's going to vary by city.

But we're in the Atlanta metro area.

Again, I'm obviously in a suburb in Marietta.

But if you have a firm, let's say it's in Marietta.

Or excuse me, let's say you have a firm in Atlanta.

And they're like, hey, what do you recommend that I spend to get results?

Not the vanity terms that you're talking about, that it sounds like don't get results, that you're going to probably have diminishing returns with your investment.

But I just want to get results.

What should I be looking to spend?

What's my monthly?

What should I expect monthly?

For 10 grand a month, you could have three in-house riders, and probably a little bit under 10 grand, but including health benefits, that these are full-time employees.

We can get to a whole bunch of different semantics, but if you spend 10 on that, maybe 10 grand on a company that's going to manage your website, and possibly even less, depending on how big your website is, and how much site architecture there really is.

If you're brand new, you don't have a lot of pages that are indexed on Google, there's not a lot to really focus on.

It's going to be less.

I think you can get by.

So, 20K?

Yeah, 100%.

If these content writers, though, how do you train them?

How do they know how to write?

Because they're English majors, right?

They're not writing for SEO.

Is their content going to your outsourced SEO agency, and then they're putting whatever?

We have back-end access to you, so we'll post it also.

Jordan, who manages all my writers, he's also a writer, trains them up.

So you have a team of writers and a manager of your writers.

Correct.

That's impressive.

It's worked.

I mean, it's paid for itself over and over again.

Well, clearly, yeah.

No one wants to do it, by the way, because everyone jumps into SEO for four or five months, they have no success and they just get out.

Right.

Well, yeah, I mean, I will say this.

I mean, the one thing that I've noticed to even here is with the billboards.

You probably saw a ton of billboards here.

Yeah.

By the way, how do you think the billboards here compared to the volume of billboards in the Tampa area?

Do you think they're about the same or do you think there are more here?

More in the highways, on the side streets, though.

Tampa's got to be.

Tampa is just awful.

They're everywhere?

It just looks like complete trash.

Well, I've seen firms that all of a sudden they'll show up and three months on a billboard.

It's like, that's not the strategy.

It's not a lead gen tool.

No, that's more shotgun advertising.

No one's just driving and sees your billboard and they're like, I got to call this person.

It's just that you start embedding that message in their head.

So three months is not enough time anyway.

It's just those impressions and they see you there.

They might see you on a Facebook-lookalike audience.

They might see you on Google.

It's just they're repeating the same message and impressions.

That's not going to be done just by billboards alone.

When you are writing all of this content for your website and have your SEO agency doing this work, another question in addition to the monetary investment is, how long is it going to take to quote work?

And again, that depends on how you're defining what works.

But, you mentioned a lot of people cut and run way too quick.

Yeah, all the time.

If you've got somebody doing it and needing to do it consistently, it used to be that I heard, give it a year.

I tell people now at least two years.

What is your thought?

That's starting from scratch, by the way.

Starting from scratch, yeah.

It depends on what your budget is because the more you're spending, if you're going to spend more money, it's not going to be on content.

Content is important, but you can do that in house.

You're spending on building links, and the more links and the bigger your link profile is, especially from relevant and related content to what you're doing.

So getting a link from Forbes looks great.

It's got strong domain authority.

It means how strong the website is.

But it's not as important as getting something from a mass tort article on the same mass tort you're doing, or a car accident source on the same type of cases that you're doing.

It's something that's relevant and related.

Google cares about that.

It's part of their algorithm.

The agencies are working on the back links for you?

Yes.

Are there any law firms you know that have in-house people to do the back linking, or that's all typically outsourced?

Usually outsourced because the agencies are going to have the relationships with all the webmasters.

That's where it gets difficult to do it in-house.

Interesting.

But I think a year to show up.

Something I've heard in terms of getting advice about the website is that sometimes too much content can weigh down your website.

How do you balance it?

Well, first of all, is that true?

Yes.

And second of all, how do you balance that concern with having five full-time writers that you need to keep busy?

Yeah.

So 80% of your search traffic comes from 20% of your pages, the 80-20 rule.

And 80-20 rule applies to everything.

80% of your revenue comes in 20% of your case.

It's the same.

You hear it over and over again.

You've got to constantly prune the tree and look at the pages that are producing.

Go to Google Search Console and look at where your visitors are coming from.

The pages that are producing nothing, get rid of them or redirect them to other pages.

We talked a little bit about SEO.

I think of that more as farming.

I think of paid search more as hunting.

Let's talk about PPC because I know a lot of people have gotten burned, myself included.

I had a funny post on LinkedIn recently about how I blew $55,000 and got three cases.

Yeah, I've seen it.

I've done worse in some, depends on the campaign, but we've tanked with $55,000.

I posted all the things I could have bought with $55,000.

The funnest thing was I could have bought a Dodge Challenger Scat Pack.

But, you know.

But you got three cases.

I got three cases instead, which probably aren't even going to pan out.

So is PPC something worth doing for lawyers in highly competitive markets?

No.

No?

No.

Okay.

All right.

PPC can work in rural areas.

It can certainly work in major areas, but you're going to be outspent by the biggest guys.

So unless you have the ability to gobble those guys up, you're going to get outspent.

Okay.

So your recommendation is unless you are your ever present marketing firm that's just kind of everywhere, don't do that.

Unless you have enough capital allocated to a large spend, and you can sustain some lean months and you're willing to see it through, what winds up happening is like a firm like Morgan will come in and they'll outbid you, and they'll actually bid.

It's almost like the Walmart model.

They make it unprofitable even for themselves, but they force you out, and then they gobble up.

They're playing the long game, they're concerned about market share.

And so, that's their goal, is to ultimately gain market share.

And so, you mentioned large spend, and a lot of people, that means different things.

We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.

Correct.

In the Atlanta metro area, you're going to be spending upwards of $75,000 a month just to have a consistent voice on paperclip, to have a share of the voice.

How do LSAs work?

LSAs, I hate to curse.

Well, first of all, I guess it's a shit show.

If you ask 10 SEO experts, you're going to get 10 different answers.

I don't know how LSAs work.

Every time you hear an expert tell you how LSAs work, and you do that, it doesn't work.

So, you brought up before we got on, shutting off your account, turning it back on, some hack that I've heard.

I've heard that before.

Maybe it works for some, it doesn't work for others.

Reviews definitely help.

How quick you answer your call definitely helps.

But other than that, and filling out, obviously making sure you give data back to Google, but I don't really have a recipe for LSAs.

Yeah, and just for people listening that don't know what LSAs are, their local service ads, I remember when they started.

It was like 2016, 17?

No, later.

In Tampa, it started around 2020.

Okay.

Right around COVID.

I feel like ours started maybe the year before COVID.

Because I remember a few trickling in, and it was like, wow, this is great.

We're starting to get cases.

Then it just went radio silent.

Yeah.

Nothing.

Yeah.

We've had an arbitrarily, we'll have a month where it just picks up and we get nine.

We're like, wow, Eureka, we figured out the formula and then the next month we're back to zero.

It doesn't make any sense.

I think for me, the biggest concern that I have, and I think whether it's PPC or LSAs, is it's so volatile that you could get such a huge influx in one month and not in another, that it's really difficult to plan as a smaller firm.

If you've got 50 attorneys, that's one thing.

You can absorb those cases, but if you're a smaller firm, it's like, well, do I need to hire somebody?

Then you hire somebody and then boom, your LSAs turn off.

I mean, I've heard stories of firms that built up because their LSAs were doing great.

All of a sudden, all of a sudden, it just drops off.

Yeah, and then it's like, we've got to let you go because we're not getting cases.

Is our LSA something that you recommend that firms try to manage in-house or try to use an agency?

Or does it even matter at this point?

I don't think it necessarily matters.

I hate to be so negative about LSAs, but I just have not seen anything that's other than arbitrary.

So, I can't figure out patterns or why one works vs.

others.

I've looked at certain pages or certain websites who just seem suddenly just rank incredibly well on LSAs.

They don't have a lot of reviews.

They are not checking their LSAs very often, so not providing feedback to Google.

They're not answering their calls in a timely manner, and they just show up out of nowhere.

So, I don't really understand it at all.

Social media is another area that I think I see a lot of people, marketing gurus, kind of pitching, well, you got to be on TikTok, you got to be on Instagram, you got to have this huge following.

What's your approach to social media and your philosophy when it comes to that?

We have a decent size audience on Instagram after we got kicked off Facebook like two and a half years ago.

How did you get kicked off Facebook?

We still don't know.

There's not like a 100 number you can call Facebook and find out, because Facebook is meta, so Facebook owns Instagram.

We tried to figure out, we didn't do anything, we didn't put any political messages, nothing that would have ever upset anybody.

To this day, I still don't know.

By the way, I'm shocked that you didn't put anything out that would upset somebody.

Well, I did after the Israel-Palestine this year, and that caused all sorts of problems.

I should have stayed off social media.

That got me kicked off Twitter, and I'm not going to say what I said.

But as far as Facebook, we didn't do anything, but we had to rebuild it again, so we have like about 26,000 I think as of today, but it's decent following.

You got to be doing it every single day though.

Yeah, I think for me, I see a lot of copycat social media accounts, and I just kind of roll my eyes out, I'm like, it's not going to work, because it's not you.

And I think, to some extent, it can also damage your brand if what you're doing on social media is inconsistent with your marketing message to other people.

They may see that and be like, wow, that's, you know, so it can actually harm you.

I think, too, the one thing that I see, a lot of social media advice is focused on lead gen.

It's, we got to be here, have this huge group of followers.

But to me, and the way that we use social media is actually a way just to develop brand affinity is one way I've heard to describe it.

People that like us, people, you know, whether our clients, community members, it's a way to also develop relationships with other people.

You know, I've been posting on LinkedIn pretty actively for a couple of years now and started to get some cases from it.

It's not a lead gen tool, but it's a way that I've developed relationships with other lawyers.

You probably get your best cases off from LinkedIn because it's B2B.

So you're getting other lawyers sending you cases.

Yeah, I mean, we've got a good medical malpractice case from another lawyer.

Occasionally, we'll get calls about cases.

So it's something that's starting to pick up, but it takes a long time, and people abandon their marketing strategies pretty quickly.

ChatGPT, what's going to happen with that?

Is that going to be a search engine tool that people are going to use to find lawyers, you think?

Inevitably, I think that at some point, AI will be the way we find lawyers.

I believe so, but who knows?

And there's been so much scuttle about AI.

But many lawyers use AI to push out content, and they use it for search engine optimization.

And I love when they do that, because they don't rank.

And they're just pushing out content that's wonky, the semantics are always off.

If you ever read something that comes from ChatGPT or any other of the AI tools, it always comes out looking a little bit, the syntax is off.

It's like when they create the images, the person has like eight fingers on one hand.

Yeah, and Google has a patent to check for AI-created content.

Yeah.

And they're just going to hit you for that.

Yeah.

Are a lot of SEO agencies using ChatGPT and other stuff for content creation?

I believe so, yes.

To push as much content as possible.

Yeah, and that's a bad thing.

And then they'll take it, they'll fluff it up and clean up some of the syntax, but even that doesn't rank.

Interesting.

Okay.

So, you would recommend that firms, that if they want to have writers, they need to pay for writers, not try and cut corners and go to check.

I mean, there's AI tools.

There's something called Surfer SEO, which will scan the top 10.

You get a search term, right?

And it'll look at who ranks in the top 10, and it'll compare each page and give you how often you should use certain terms and certain headers.

That's helpful, but using AI to actually write the content is problematic.

Let's hop to intake, because that's a big thing.

I see a lot of lawyers, you know, they don't have the infrastructure in place to handle the leads, which is a big problem.

And then, of course, there's a lot of firms that don't have the infrastructure to actually work on the cases.

Even bigger problem.

Yeah, I mean, they put all their money in case acquisition, which is getting more expensive, and so then they cut costs on operations, and then they do a terrible job for the client.

This is probably going to blow some people's minds.

It'll probably blow my mind, because I imagine it's high, but I don't know the exact amount.

Do you mind sharing with us, like, on a monthly basis, how many intake calls are y'all processing?

Single event, mass tort, all of it.

Let's start.

Can we start at the top and then break it down?

Single event calls, just people just calling.

In a lot of these cases, tire kickers or worthless calls.

Just leads, not even qualified leads.

Just you got to handle the call.

About 16,000.

A month?

That's a lot.

Yeah.

That includes mass torts, though, like Suboxone.

That's still a lot.

You're getting a lot of people calling, and Suboxone is its own little show.

Are you managing these all with like an agency that's?

No, in-house.

We built out some are on-site, some are off-site.

So, we have five on-site and 12 off-site, 17 individuals.

You're answering at all times.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Are some of these remote employees outside the US?

Yes.

Okay.

I have a remote employee.

It's my sister-in-law.

So, my wife's from Costa Rica.

She is our Costa Rica call center on the nights and weekends.

We have Manel Salvador.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

I kind of joke with Priscilla.

She's my sister-in-law that I'm going to build out the Costa Rica office and, you know, might as well make some visits down there.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

That's a ton of leads.

How many of those do you think are single events?

Single event leads is probably in the, we're looking at seven to eight hundred of those a month.

That's still a ton.

Single event leads.

Leads, though.

Not most of the cases.

A ton of them are medical malpractice.

You know that you have to look at a hundred leads.

Yeah.

What I tell people is, we have to look at a hundred to even get a case where I'm like, yeah, this makes sense to retain an expert to look at.

Then of the ones, the expert reviews, it's like 50-50.

Of course, that depends on what your threshold is too, on what you're sending.

Some people are better at filtering those out before even sending it to an expert.

If you rank high from Ed Malterms, you're getting all, like you said earlier, all of everyone else's re-checks.

So it's like, so I will mention this.

We had at one point, this was about a year ago, I think.

All of a sudden, LSAs for Ed Malterms just went bananas.

Like it just started working.

We got like 20 calls in one day, and it was like overwhelming.

The next day, it was like another 20.

The next day, finally we were like, these aren't even remotely close to being leads.

These were not anything that a person needed to be speaking to somebody about.

What did you do?

Did you check off every box and LSA?

I don't remember what happened.

I don't know that we had even changed anything.

I think it was just all of a sudden it started working.

I was hoping it was like maybe our organic SEO was finally like, boom, taking off because that would be better.

Sure.

Instead, it was LSA.

So, yeah, we ended up.

Of course, the concern with that too is when you get an LSA, it's pay per lead instead of pay per click.

It's like, do we ask for a refund from Google?

Because, yeah, but then I'm worried that I'd get penalized for it.

We've always asked for it.

Really?

Yeah, because most of those calls are just worthless.

Okay.

Well, no concern there.

I never really saw myself fall off any further than we've already fallen off.

So, I don't really know if it's a fact or not.

Out of those single event cases, let's say 7, 800, how many are you all signing a month?

Now, also consider the fact that we also get a lot of web chat.

So, web chat probably produces a good 15, 20 cases a month.

Okay.

So, let's say you're doing 800 to 850 a month total.

We're signing as a firm about 130, 150 cases a month.

Okay.

What we don't keep all of them, we actually be about 2020, we change our model.

We only keep about 10 cases a month.

We refer everything else out.

The volume.

What are you doing to get this intake to work?

Because that's the biggest concern that I have.

Anytime that we started getting a volume of leads is the conversion.

Seems like it's gotten harder.

Even converting referrals has gotten harder, just because of the competition.

Just tell us a little bit about the, I mean, if you want to describe it as the client's journey, the potential client, like who are they talking to, and what that process is, and how they're being converted.

So, take you through the person bring ring.

Yeah, so I was in a car accident yesterday.

Are they talking to, let's say it's a big case.

Yeah, we have a few people that are on site that will handle those leads generally.

So, we have those based on call attribution, based on the pages, we have those routed to specific numbers, and those numbers are answered by specific folks.

So, yeah, I mean, if somebody gets hit by the Coca-Cola truck, we hope, we hope they're talking to somebody on site, not someone in El Salvador, not knocking to people in El Salvador.

People on site are a little bit better trained as to looking at specific accents.

The El Salvadorian individuals, that's proper English, I don't even know.

I just made that up.

They're handling more of the mass tort overflow.

Mass tort produces a lot of leads.

So, you're handling your single events with US-based entities?

Most.

I mean, there's some overflow, and depending if they're on the phone, it'll route to another person.

So, it's a call tree.

So, calls, if those five are on the phone, it routes to number six, number seven.

Do you have an ultimate backup, like it goes to the, whether it's an answering service or intake service?

Yeah, we have an actually offsite answering service, too, if everyone's jammed up, and all 17 lines somehow just that happens, or if we have some kind of technology issue and we just drop off, we do have fail saves.

Let's say that it's a routine car wreck case.

It's not going to be a massive, huge six or seven figure case, but it's your routine, hey, I was hit, car ran a red light, I've been to the hospital, I've got some neck pain.

They're speaking to a non-attorney staff member, right?

And then is that person taking the details and having an attorney call them right away, or is that staff member trying to convert them into a signed client?

We try to convert them right then and there.

You got to convert them when you have them on the phone.

The problem is, the call back option, most of the time, those individuals are not going to answer their phone afterwards.

You have one shot to get that person.

Even if you're referring to another law firm, you got to do a warm transfer, taking that and just emailing it over to another lawyer and hoping that they call that person.

More often than not, especially the smaller cases, they're going to go elsewhere.

Bigger cases are more likely to stick around, actually.

Yeah, interesting.

They'll be a bit more patient.

They're also going to research their lawyers.

Yeah, I think that's been my experience, too, here, is the smaller the case, also the more needy the client is.

Yes, always.

Of course, yes.

You know, we've had people call, and they're like in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and they're not really that hurt.

You know, but because clearly, if you were like knocked unconscious or you had some back injury.

It would be your biggest concern at that moment.

Yes.

Just find your personal injury lawyer.

Yeah, we've had times where somebody's at the accident scene and is like trying to pass the phone to the police officer and say, here, talk to my lawyer.

We're like, wait, time out.

You have inside a contract with us.

Yeah, we don't know who you are.

Yeah.

I think a concern that I've had from friends of mine who have firms similar to mine in terms of our size and business model is, they're worried about the ability of non-attorney staff to convert.

Have you seen any problems or any differences between attorneys converting clients versus the non-attorney staff?

Yeah.

If I get it on a phone call with a client, if I want that case, more often than not, I'm going to be able to convert them.

Because you know enough about what to say and what not to say.

You have such a vested interest in laying that case.

The person who's off-site or even somebody who's on-site, they're not as good as obviously you're going to be, and the lawyer is going to be.

But are we converting for the most part?

Yeah.

Do you have a training program that they do with you?

Do you use an outsourced trainer that trains your people on intake?

We do.

We use an outsourced person.

Gary Falkowitz, I think, does a good job.

What's the name of his company?

It used to be Intake Conversion Experts, but he sold that.

It used to be ICE.

If you look up Gary Falkowitz, F-A-L-K-O-W-I-T-Z, he speaks at all different functions.

He's all over the country, but he's out of Long Island, New York.

Okay.

Have you seen any differences over the last five years of the ability to convert clients?

I have heard that from friends of mine who are like, and again, I don't know if it's perception, and I don't know what it is, but they'll say like, hey, it just seems like it's harder to convert.

It seems like we're getting more tire kickers.

It seems like people are wanting to negotiate fees more.

More tire kickers, more people trying to negotiate fees.

That's definitely true.

Well, we've gotten better at converting.

We were terrible before.

So, I guess it's the wrong mantra, because before we weren't converting as many as we should, and now we're converting a lot more because we've actually brought outside people in to teach us, rather than trying to figure out ourselves.

We were just awful on our own.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say we've ever been terrible, but we've definitely had areas where we could improve.

Do you record all your calls?

I don't know if we record all of them, do we?

Yes.

This will be a popular one.

Let's talk about mistakes in marketing.

What are some common mistakes that you see lawyers make over and over again, and you're like, I see this time and again.

Why do people keep doing it?

Sometimes it's the same firm that will make the same mistake over and over again.

There's so many.

Paperclik in competitive markets without the ability and bandwidth to really spend a lot of money and compete with like the Morgan and Morgan's, the Motlix of the world who are going to outspend you.

Jumping into SEO and not doing it for a long period of time, that you need to least put a year in.

If you're not going to stay in for a long duration, don't get in because you're not going to see immediate results.

Those individuals are looking for immediacy, and then they get turned off three months later, the phone doesn't ring, and then they just turn it off and they get upset.

Not having the proper intake team or the proper infrastructure set up to handle the leads.

If you're not answering that phone call within like five, ten seconds, if you're not returning like a web chat within a few minutes, you're going to lose that person.

They're going to call the next firm.

More often than not.

Yeah, we have an intake specialist who's in-house.

We have kind of like a backup plan if she's unavailable.

We've got a backup call service or answering service that will handle it.

I think some of this too depends on, I think some of it's generational.

So, I think old school lawyers are like, oh yeah, just get around and call them back in a few days.

And that's just kind of the way they grew up practicing law.

Yeah, it's not that way anymore.

It does not work that way.

Yeah, that person is not going to be sitting around anymore.

Yeah, I mean, it's like you got to jump on it.

You've got to get them converted.

And I imagine you're getting these signed up through, do you all use Lead Docket?

We use Lead Docket forever.

I love Lead Docket.

Lead Docket is the best.

We dropped off Lead Docket because we made the mistake of getting Smart Advocate.

Okay.

Smart Advocate for anyone who's listening.

Smart Advocate is not going to be a sponsor of this podcast, apparently.

Smart Advocate is awful.

I hope they're listening to this, the worst.

Their service is just awful.

They have one or two individuals that handle all their software issues.

They probably need 20 or 30.

They've grown very fast, but they hire more individuals to help.

Everything's in queue and it takes a month or two to get fixed.

It's just a, don't get me started.

But we replace it as because before we were using one system as our case management and another would lead docket to manage our outside referrals.

Now we use everything through Smart Advocates.

I wish we could go back.

You're signing these all up digitally.

Most.

Yeah, e-sign.

Most.

Anybody pop into the office in Clearwater, Florida to sign up?

Occasionally.

Those days are, it used to be often.

Now it's, we get one a week, depending if somebody wants to come and meet a lawyer.

It's a bigger case.

The bigger case is yes.

We have investigators that go out and sign these individuals up.

We have an ex-police officer that goes out and handles those, but for the most part, it's digital.

Yeah.

On the intake side, when it comes to converting, you mentioned earlier signing them up when they're on the phone.

Yeah.

One of the concerns that I hear is like, what if I don't want the case?

Like, what if the attorney looks at it after and says, ah, this isn't a case?

Maybe it's a premises case.

And you're like, this is a clear summary judgment case.

Sign it.

Still sign it?

Yeah, oversign.

You can always turn people down.

You can't get that person back who didn't sign.

Right.

It's so easy to turn someone down.

You just look at it, review it, and then you do the diligence, and you just sign the case.

The next concern that I hear in response to that is, well, then they're going to be mad at me, and they're going to leave me a bad Google review.

Very rarely.

If you handle a class, you explain why we're not taking this case, we just did our investigation.

It doesn't mean you don't have a case.

You know, the language.

We gave it a best go, where this isn't a case we're going to handle, but here's a group of law firms you can call.

Yeah, and we had that happen recently.

We signed a premises case, and the store, which almost never gives videos, was like, hey, I want to show you this video.

And I'm like, uh-oh, this isn't good.

Like, when they want to show me the video...

It's terrible.

It's terrible.

So we did a Zoom, and they showed the video, and we're like, yeah, that's just not a case.

And we told the client, and she was fine.

But I think that's good advice.

Do you ever think that people feel rushed while they're on the phone to sign, or...

We've had individuals that ask for, you know, if they can speak to their spouse, or if they can get back to us, and then it's the cadence of following up with that individual, and how often you follow up, that also...

That will make the difference.

Is the follow up typically done by the same person that handled their initial intake?

Usually.

Unless an attorney is involved.

And are they following up by phone call, or...

Phone call.

Phone call, taxi, you know, we do it all.

Especially, mask torch is a little bit different.

Mask torch are harder to get those individuals on the phone.

Yeah.

They want to do things just via email or, like, DocuSign.

They don't want to talk to anyone.

So, let's talk about some predictions for the next five to ten years, in terms of marketing, and then also I want to talk about business models as well.

From a marketing perspective, what do you see changing or new developments coming up on the horizon?

More automation, to simplify processes internally, using more AI to streamline your intake process and getting rid of employees.

I hate saying that.

I don't like that, by the way.

I try to go the opposite way of using AI.

It's tough to say what's going to happen with Google.

You know, we keep seeing less and less landscape for organic.

It is true, although there's still SEO.

Yeah, I hear a lot of people say, is SEO dead?

It's not dead, but they're...

People haven't said that for like 20 years, by the way.

Yeah, I've been hearing since we can prove the obvious.

I wouldn't still be around.

But I do think that there's less and less landscape for, or real estate, for case acquisition.

Yeah.

It's all paid now.

Yeah, I think case acquisition costs are going to continue to just go through the roof.

Yeah, and the biggest problem is the outside money that's coming into the personal injury space, coming in through Arizona, you know, the alternative business structure, the ABS.

You're seeing a lot of private equity that's getting involved in the personal injury space, because Arizona allows non-lawyers, especially private equity guys, to get involved with a law firm and actually be a partner as long as there's a lawyer that's involved in the firm.

Is there any requirement on like what percentage of ownership has to be lawyers?

Or does any of the ownership have to be lawyers?

Yes, you have to have at least one lawyer involved, so you can't have more than 50% be private equity, I believe, but I can find that out.

But it's allowing a lot of money to flow into the space, more so in mass torts, but definitely in single event.

Then, of course, you have the big advertisers, like your Morgan & Morgan, that's going to continue to gain market share.

I saw-

They're swallowing up a lot of smaller firms.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what they're doing.

Actually, one of my paralegals here used to work for a solo attorney.

I wouldn't say so.

He had like two or three attorneys, and he sold his firm to Morgan & Morgan.

I went to go work for him, and she didn't want to do that, so she came and joined me.

But I think I saw something online that was talking about Morgan & Morgan's advertising budget.

I want to say it was like 2017, it was like $30 million or something.

Last year, it's like $300 million.

It's just going through the roof, and it's creating an arms race in every market.

$300 million?

That's what I said.

Nationwide.

Yikes.

I believe it, though.

They're everywhere.

Yeah.

Obviously, small firms can't compete with that.

What I always tell people is you don't have to compete with that.

So, I think what I'm seeing from a trend perspective on the business model side, and it dovetails with the marketing is you're going to see more and more of the trial lawyers, the traditional litigators that are not interested in marketing going to work for advertisers, because the advertisers are going to continue to be the ones to get more cases.

I think, too, a lot of people, there used to be a stigma associated with advertising for some lawyer, or for some generations, there still are.

But if you're under the age of 50, it's just commonplace, and it's everywhere.

And with the younger generation being so used to social media and seeing these brands, I think you're going to see more and more market share gained by these advertising firms.

No question about it.

So, I'm not in that space.

What do you tell me, Matt?

What should I do?

Should I go work for one of these folks?

No, but I think some will, and I think they're going to gobble up a lot more of the smaller firms and mom and pop shops.

But no, there's always going to be enough cases out there.

Plus, you also benefit from them, too.

And you have to think about it like this.

The more often they're talking about personal injury cases, there's people that are actually looking for personal injury lawyers, and everyone chooses Morgan.

So, they amplify the message also of the need for a personal injury lawyer.

That's a good point.

I never thought of it that way.

Yeah, they're not actually the enemy, but they kind of are.

And I will say this, I view insurance companies and the defense industry as the enemy.

Yeah.

Like, I'm thrilled when I see a huge Morgan & Morgan verdict.

Like, I'm thrilled for them.

I'm thrilled for the client.

Like, I'm team plain enough, 100%.

Of course.

You know, again, it just comes down to differences on business models.

And the fact we have arbitration clauses in their fee contracts.

No big deal.

Yeah.

So, did they really?

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because on their website, they actually talk about how bad arbitration clauses are.

And we're seeing a lot of stuff with arbitration clauses.

We had the thing with Disney, where the woman died of the allergic reaction.

There was a recent decision, I think, that got in New Jersey, involving an Uber, where a couple was in the back of an Uber, was in a serious wreck, and they tried to sue Uber.

And they said, sorry, when you signed up for your Uber Eats account, three years earlier, to order a pizza, you agreed to arbitrate any dispute with Uber.

And they were like, well, it was my 12-year-old daughter that signed up for it.

They're like, doesn't matter.

You're stuck with arbitration.

So I think that arbitration clauses are a problem nationwide.

And the more and more things that we buy and use that are going to be subject to terms and conditions and agreements, the more people are going to try to insert arbitration clauses.

So I think if we're going to have the moral high ground on arbitration clauses as lawyers, we should not have arbitration clauses in our own agreements.

Because then it seems like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth.

But I digress.

No.

I digress.

A lot of these firms tend to do that.

Yeah.

So any parting advice for firms like mine, like small firms that have five to ten lawyers that are trying to survive and compete in a highly competitive metro market and personal injury?

Yeah.

It's the one thing you haven't asked me about.

It's mailbox money.

Focus on areas that you're not going to actually handle.

Referral business, mass torts, stuff that...

It doesn't hurt you to put out content every last mass tort project out there, get those case and refer it to other lawyers.

Some of those are going to pan out.

They're lottery tickets and everything's going to work.

But some of those products are going to pan out to fruition.

You're going to get paid referral money.

Lights on.

Yeah.

Without referral money, do you have a philosophy on what you do with it?

Do you allocate a certain amount to reinvest in the marketing to focus on other cases?

Yeah.

Cars and toys.

But it depends.

I mean, everyone has their own financial needs.

But yeah, we usually take a good portion of what we make and put it back towards the firm and their growth.

Yeah.

I mean, I always think of it as like when we get a check from another lawyer, I'm like, I completely forgot about that case.

Yeah.

And it shows up and I'm like, man, this is great.

Well, let me ask you one thing that I didn't ask you about.

Firms that want to focus on attorney referrals.

One, are there opportunities for them to market to other lawyers through digital marketing, whether it's SEO, social media, whatever.

And two, do you have any tips for how they can market to firms that are getting all these cases like you're getting?

Because firms like yours that have a lot of cases are going to be firms that these lawyers want to do business with.

So, you're thinking of the trial lawyer who wants to get business from the lawyer who's the aggregator?

Yeah, or not even the trial lawyer.

Somebody who's like, you mentioned the single event cases.

You're only taking a small amount, you're referring the rest out.

How do they get to be your person that you're referring these cases to, or a group of firms?

LinkedIn is probably the best tool for that, to be honest with you, or email outreach.

And it's just specifically to target the individuals you want to reach out to, but also in sync with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is B2B.

So putting out the message that you want to work with other lawyers, you're looking to refer out cases in specific GEO areas, and those people will get in touch with you.

But if you also have specific candidates you want to work with, then reach out to them directly through email.

Okay.

From a digital marketing side, aside from LinkedIn, what about organic content on SEO?

Is there anything that lawyers can be doing to market other lawyers on Google?

Long-tail keywords, maybe.

Maybe a lawyer will have some specific problem and you answer the question.

I mean, lawyers do tell me all the time that they see us pop up in their area with answers to certain questions.

Sometimes I'm not always right.

We've been called out for that too.

Because the semantics and differences in state law.

But yeah, I guess being omnipresent helps get those relationships started.

But I hadn't really thought about it in that context.

Get a suite at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

That will definitely help.

It will bring people in.

Yeah.

Somebody told me, and I forget who it was, but for some reason, they showed up.

When you search local council Atlanta, they showed up as like number one.

So everybody in every other state that needed local council on a case in Georgia would call them.

So they got some business from that.

Sure.

Another way to do it, and I've always looked at it and getting out of side of SEO, is looking at the trial or magazine for specific states and advertising there.

For instance, everyone has accidents or knows somebody to travel to Florida, and Florida is a hotbed for travel, same as California.

So you'll see often like New Jersey lawyers advertising in like, not the classified, but in like the back section of our trial or magazine, and they'll take out a one-page ad.

Yeah.

I mean, we have clients that are involved in RECs in all the states and around us, especially Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina.

So it's good to build that network.

The one thing that I found works really well too is the reciprocity principle.

So if you're referring business to other lawyers, they're more likely to refer you business, whether they're family law, probate, criminal, whatever.

Goes without saying.

So that helps a ton.

Well, thank you for joining us, Matt.

This has been a very informative discussion.

I'm looking forward to the game tonight to have more discussions, maybe over a bourbon and some steak.

Hopefully Mets win also while we're watching that game.

I will have the Mets on in the suite at the Falcons game.

But I appreciate you joining us.

Thank you very much for having me.